


recusant

by spookykingdomstarlight



Category: Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Bonding, Drinking & Talking, F/F, Friendship, Future Fic, Gen, Implied/Referenced Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Implied/Referenced Homophobia, Infertility, Post-Season/Series 06, Trust
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-09-18
Updated: 2016-09-18
Packaged: 2018-08-08 13:13:13
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,077
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7759147
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/spookykingdomstarlight/pseuds/spookykingdomstarlight
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“Pour me a glass,” she says, gesturing at the crystalline decanter near Tyrion’s hand, careful to modulate the tone with which she speaks. Arching her eyebrow, dubious, she searches the room for a sign of anything other than the usual, banal accoutrements of power. Which is to say: there is parchment everywhere and ink and wax and seals and quills, even a stray raven’s feather or two. Things she had not needed anywhere near so much in Meereen. They seem to multiply if she looks away from them for more than a second. “If a glass can be found.”</p><p>This is not the place she would have chosen to relax for the evening, but Tyrion has always had unique ideas about leisure. Perhaps this is merely one of them.</p>
            </blockquote>





	recusant

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Sumi](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sumi/gifts).



“Oh, this is—” Tyrion says, laughing with such spirited joy that Dany cannot help but smile in return, not a little confused, but pleased still that her adviser—her… friend—has found something to feel happiness about. “This is… I almost wish you knew her, Your Grace, so you might better appreciate it.” He laughs again, full-throated, the noise fading reluctantly when fade it finally does.

“Appreciate what?” she says, stepping toward him. Without the rest of her advisers to fill it, her council chamber seems too big, ill-suited to the purpose Tyrion has put it to. Not that that has ever stopped him before. He lounges in the chair designated as his, one leg hooked over the arm, his balance preserved by his elbow on the opposite one. It looks uncomfortable, but that, too, has never stopped him. His pin gleams on his chest and above his head, where the Hand’s symbol is emblazoned on the leather upholstery instead of his house’s sigil. A detail upon which he’d insisted upon rather vehemently when the thing was constructed. She stops for a moment to admire the three-headed dragon of her house, the creature curling angry red on the black leather cushion of her own chair, before she takes to sitting upon it in rather less informal a fashion than Tyrion. “Who is ‘she?’”

“ _She_ is my dear sister, Cersei,” he replies. “And _she_ has an affinity for drink that matches my own. And _she_ has managed to anger all the finest wine producers in Westeros in one fell swoop. I cannot imagine a more cruel punishment for her.” But though his words are light, his mouth turns downward, suddenly unhappy. She’d heard from Varys about the Baratheon—no, the _Lannister_ —children. Dany knows which is the crueler punishment.

And so, it seems, does Tyrion, though he would tell jokes and pretend otherwise. He has lost his niece and nephews and they, he and Dany, are now plotting even more fervently against his sister than he might have anticipated. Probably, too, his brother—whom he still loves despite everything, she is sure, and about whom Varys has not yet learned enough intelligence to tell whether he will back Cersei or stab her in the back. Regardless, a sharp wit is not the weapon Dany would take to these problems. Still, it is, she imagines, a bitter position to be in. So better he soothe himself with jests than fall apart entirely.

Dany could try to comfort him, though her skills in that arena are limited and his acceptance of comfort even more so, but even if she wanted to she doesn’t have the words. He’s the one burdened with an excess of speech. She, rarely. In this, they are a complimentary pair.

But what she can do is this: she can let him have this moment and berate him another day for his callousness, should the situation arise a second time.

Then again, allowing him to demonize his own sister might be useful. Perhaps she should stay quiet, despite the subject matter and the heart in her chest that feels him making light of his sister’s loss is much the same as him making light of her own, the one thing she never wants to see happen. Ever. The death of a child is a tragedy always.

 _Another time_ , she thinks.

And instead says, “Pour me a glass,” gesturing at the crystalline decanter near Tyrion’s hand, careful to modulate the tone with which she speaks. Arching her eyebrow, dubious, she searches the room for a sign of anything other than the usual, banal accoutrements of power. Which is to say: there is parchment everywhere and ink and wax and seals and quills, even a stray raven’s feather or two. Things she had not needed anywhere near so much of in Meereen. They seem to multiply if she looks away from them for more than a second. It would be petty to admit to hating such supplies, but hate them she does. “If a glass can be found in this mess.”

Really, this is not the place she would have chosen to relax for the evening, but Tyrion has always had unique ideas about leisure. Perhaps this is merely one of them.

Tyrion sneers, good-natured, and grumbles as he climbs down from his chair, only a little unsteady. So he hasn’t been drinking long. Good. Regardless, she allows him this small freedom, well aware that there is little heat behind these particular mumblings. She watches him as he swaggers toward a cabinet in the far corner of the room and flicks the latch free one-handed, drinking from his glass all the while. Not at all unsteady now, she sees.

“Your Grace,” he says upon returning, bowing as he presents the clean, sparkling goblet to her. When she doesn’t take it, he sets it down and fills it, sliding it across the table toward her, the dark liquid sloshing dangerously against the lip.

“Thank you,” she says, prim, a smirk twitching at the corner of her mouth. She cannot be this way with many people, this—informal. If that is even the word for it. But it pleases her that Tyrion isn’t so serious as her other subjects can be, isn’t so awed by her. Her position is a lonely one and by the day the distance builds between herself and everyone else, their fear and their love at war inside of them, leaving them nervous to be near her. One day, he, too, will grow quiet in her presence and she will be unable to speak with him this way anymore.

She hopes, childishly perhaps, that that day is a long way off.

“To what do I owe the singular pleasure of your company?” Tyrion asks, drumming his fingers along the base of his glass. “Word of another skirmish to the north? Cersei’s sent another raiding party south? Let me guess—”

Dany raises her hand and speaks, her voice warm to blunt the impact of it. “Stop.”

“As my Queen commands,” he replies, lifting his glass to salute. The poor coordination of the move almost earns him a spilled drink. For that, she barks a laugh.

Rolling her eyes, she says, “Nothing has happened.” She peers deep into the glistening surface of the wine. Nothing but the vague red blur of her shadow in its reflection greets her. She lifts her glass to her lips, savors the almost sour, dry flavor of the wine. Dornish, she believes, and of good quality. Tyrion has drunk enough of it in their time in Westeros to suggest as much anyway.

Then again, he would drink anything. Perhaps this is not the metric she should use to gauge any liquor’s quality.

“Something is happening,” Tyrion says into his glass, his words muted by it. “Whether we know about it or not. That’s the problem with the world. Something is _always_ happening.”

“I’m sure there is. But as it is not happening here, it is of little importance to me at this moment.” The smooth edge of the glass is cool beneath the touch of her fingertip, soothing as her mind races at his reminder, her words little more than armor against the truth. There is something disquieting about being here finally in the land her father, her ancestors, and usurpers alike have ruled and there are machinations everywhere. From so many corners as to be unbelievable. She herself has governed for long years now, too, but in a place where her enemies shared one motive. Rarely, then, had she felt uncertainty. The experience of it now— _here_ —is uncomfortable. She forces herself to confront it—for the brief stretch of a handful of seconds anyway—before dismissing it and deciding her assertion is true, that she is not troubled. She needn’t know everything. No ruler can. Better to turn the conversation to more immediate concerns.

Or, if not concerns, pleasant distractions, anyway.

“What do you think of Lady Greyjoy?”

“You mean the pirate queen of—” Tyrion’s brow furrows and his mouth drops open as he lifts his eyes to Dany’s. He clears his throat. “Lady Greyjoy. She is very… commanding.” His attention drifts, slides to nothing in particular, a vague elsewhere that Dany can’t track, eyes glassy with something more potent than alcohol. If she didn’t know better, she’d call the look a distracted one. At moments like this, Dany’s not sure he sees anything but the inside of his own mind working away. And knowing him as well as she does, instead she sees the calculations Tyrion is making within that curious brain of his. The decisions. The words unsaid. The conclusions he’s reaching. He squints and tilts his head just so. And yet Dany has no idea what he’ll end up saying once he has the mind to say it. Offhand, eventually, she gets her answer. “I don’t think she likes to be called Lady Greyjoy. Why?”

_That’s all you have to say about her?_

“No reason.” Dany sips her drink, wishes for a moment that it was of more delicate provenance, and holds back a frown. She might like to taste something sweet for once, light. Everything in Westeros is so— _heavy_. Even her clothing hangs upon her with a terrible new weight. And the weather is—

“That’s convincing,” he says, disrupting the line of her thoughts.

“I will have no heir,” Dany says, tearing the words from her own throat. They land on the table, bloody, for the way she spits them out. She thinks of Cersei again and tells herself not to feel more deeply what that woman represents. “Being married to me would…”

“Be a boon to any smart man, Your Grace,” Tyrion says, polite. Kind even. “Marriage can be more than the offspring produced within it.” He doesn’t mention Daario or his own parents or any of the tales told to young ladies of perfect matrimonial matches, which is all for the best, though his meaning is clear enough. _People marry for love. Sometimes._

People do, Dany might admit.

But she knows the price nobles pay for love.

Besides, no one said anything of _love_. And Tyrion is being intentionally dense if he wants to pretend as such.

Proving that point, Tyrion hides his smirk behind his raised glass. “Did Lady Greyjoy’s enchanting rejoinder entice you?” He squints again, this time head tilting toward the ceiling as though his memories might be splashed across its distant surface. “What was it she said? Oh, she’s ‘up for anything really.’ Charming.”

Glaring, Dany purses her lips, contemplates rebuking Tyrion for his insight and derision both. He means it as a joke. And Dany… perhaps Dany does not.

It isn’t love, she doesn’t think. She’s known nothing of love for so long that she’s not sure she’d recognize the sensation, having changed so much since the last time she’d felt it. But what she does have for Yara is respect. And more than that, she impresses Dany. That is a special thing for anyone to feel about another person. Dany not least of all.

She finds herself hoping Yara succeeds in her quest to rule the Iron Islands after all—a strange turn of events to be sure. She has not hoped for anyone’s victory but her own in quite some time. That means something, though Dany is not yet sure what. And, perhaps to a small degree, she wants to ensure that this empathy, this desire of hers, does not come back around and destroy her chances at seeing her own goals fulfilled.

An alliance of a more permanent sort would suit her perfectly in that respect.

And it hadn’t taken long to learn of Yara’s genuine preferences, discretion being to her of little interest. A woman that brazen, well. A smile threatens to form on Dany’s face. Dany wouldn’t be lying if she didn’t admit to being _intrigued_. Anyone would be so.

“You’re…” Tyrion’s chair creaks as he leans forward, the table bearing half his weight as his elbows catch on it. “You’re serious, aren’t you?”

Dany’s brow arches. “Whatever gave you that idea?” she asks, sly.

“I—” He cuts himself off, eyebrows furrowing in deep, concerned thought. “Well. You do have dragons. If you were inclined that way. Those creatures do make for a compelling argument.” He grows serious, more like the Hand she had made him into. “And you’ve allied yourself with the more… forgiving houses of Westeros. I suppose if you really wanted to…”

The more seriously he takes it, the harder her stomach twists up, the wine settling ill in her gut. Perhaps he’s merely humoring her and she shouldn’t allow herself to feel anything other than annoyance and anger at his wasting her time this way.

No. Not Tyrion. He has proved he has little interest in humoring her. He means what he says always. Her nervousness is well-earned, if inexplicable.

“Of course, even assuming your supporters accept it, you may still have a problem.”

“And what would that be?”

“Would Lady Greyjoy want it?” His hand scrubs at his mouth and then flaps through the air as though to make its own point about the situation. “The ironborn do not support her claim to the Salt Throne as it is. To risk everything for an unconventional match?” He shakes his head, tongue clicking, rapid fire. “I might just question whether she is not secretly a Stark.”

“You think we couldn’t persuade them?”

“I think if force of will was all it took to convince the ironborn of anything, she needn’t have to come to you in the first place.” His fingers tap out a frenetic rhythm against the table, his nails plunking quicker and quicker against the wood. “I think you ought to take her as your mistress and have done with it if that’s what you’re interested in. _I think_ she’d take little issue with such an arrangement as that. Marriage doesn’t have to come into it at all.”

“Perhaps I should ask her,” Dany says, far off and intractable, clawing into the idea now that it seems an unlikely possibility. Where before, she’d merely harbored the idea as a harmless fancy, now she thinks, _I have moved armies across oceans. Why can I not do this, too?_

 _I will not be ruled by the ironborn. And nor shall Yara if she does not wish it_.

“Perhaps you should. I can’t claim to understand the ironborn any more than they might claim to understand Casterly Rock.” He shrugs, feigning a loss of interest in the conversation, a signal as much as anything else. That is, she supposes, a good thing. Others might not have allowed her this diversion with so little concern. In fact, he might well have made her life difficult for this line of thought.

He still could.

 _No,_ she thinks, certain of that much at least. _He has and will make my life difficult for many reasons—but not for this._

He looks down at his hands, grimacing. “You care about her, don’t you?”

“Only a little,” Dany says, willing herself to react as little as possible to the taunt.

Tyrion’s gaze slides away, his cheek twitching as his mouth turns downward. “That sort of thing could get you killed, you know. Caring for a person. It could get her killed.” His voice, normally rather strong or light or angry, takes on a somber tone. “The ironborn are a ruthless people. The rest of Westeros is filled with ruthless people, too.”

“ _We_ are ruthless people.” Dany doesn’t point out all the many things she has done over the years that have earned her that description. They are too numerous to count. And besides, Tyrion knows it all by now already. “I am, at any rate.”

“And humble.”

“Only around you,” she says, mostly in jest. She is a braggart when she has to be—and she has to be often. That is the trouble with being a woman in power. Men so rarely believe you can wield it, so you must overcompensate. But Tyrion is not like most men. He would rather she prove herself just and wise, the kind of person she wants to be. The kind of person the world has not allowed her to become. Every moment of grace, of mercy, she has found in herself, she’d had to sacrifice something in return.

She is, reluctant though she might be to admit it, lucky that he found her when he did.

And maybe that she hadn’t immediately had him killed at that time.

How much more brutal would she be now without his hand to stay hers?

“Perhaps you should learn ruthlessness.” It isn’t a kind suggestion, but it is one made out of kindness. His cynicism is sharp and fierce, but it is merely armor for him. And armor can be pierced. Dany worries about him on occasion because of it.

“I haven’t the stomach for it in the long-term.” He scowls at his own response, the result of a tongue loosened by drink. He is remembering something in his past, Dany would wager. Clearing his throat, he continues, “Perhaps that’s my problem.”

“There is time yet,” she replies, pushing herself to her feet, her dress slipping across her thighs, the hem settling on the floor, dragging against it. A constant reminder of how far she’s come. She reaches for the decanter, waggles it between her fingers as the liquid inside breaks against the graceful inward arc of its walls. “And wine still to be drunk.” She takes Tyrion’s glass from him and pours a more than generous portion into it. The tart, astringent scent of it prickles at her nose. She then fills her own glass and holds it up. “To ruthless people.”

Tyrion echoes her toast, dubious, but drinks deeply and settles back into his chair, making a toast of his own. “To enticing marriage proposals.”

And if they sit together as the hour grows late, until the wine is gone and they are laughing over the nonsense stories Tyrion tells about King’s Landing and tourneys and rough Northerners, until Dany forgets for a time that she has needs and desires she’d see fulfilled and maybe Tyrion forgets about the uncomfortable family situation he finds himself in. If they forget all that for the span of a few hours, there is no one around to tell them they should do otherwise.


End file.
